Before you do
anything, talk to the older family members and ask them to relate
anything at all that they can remember about the family. Record
every detail. You may need several visits to some of the older
relations as they tend not to remember details until after you
have left and they continue to think and recall.

Find out if there
are any birth, christening or baptismal certificates, or marriage
or death certificates anywhere within the family. To make a start
on your research you really need your grandparent's birth
certificates and marriage certificates. If the marriage
certificate is not in your family's possession, as long as your
parents know the names of their parents and the marriage date,
the certificate is easily obtained from the Office of the
Registrar of Births Deaths & Marriages. A Marriage
Certificate is your link to the next generation, as it usually
gives the names of the father of both the bride and groom.

Check the family
Bibles. It was commonplace to record the family births, deaths
and marriages inside the cover of the family Bible.

Don't lose sight of
the fact that although there may be only ONE of you and you may
have only had 2 parents and 4 grandparents, you had 8 great
grandparents, 16 gg grandparents, 32 ggg grandparents, 64 gggg
grandparents 128 ggggg grandparents etc.

It is best to work
backwards, from known information about already-identified
ancestors. i.e. your parents or grandparents. Trying to work
forwards, e.g seeking descendants of the famous historical figure
that family legend claims as an ancestor of yours in the hope of
somehow eventually reaching your own family, is very rarely
profitable.But
don't try and go too far back too soon. Take small steps and be
very, very sure of the facts before taking the next step. Never ASSUME.

Document
everything. Keep a careful record of every search you make even
if you find nothing. It will save you from searching the same
records again at a later stage.

To assist you in
the early stages of your research you should make use of the
various free charts available on the web to record all the
details as you find them. If you don't keep your details in some
semblance of order you soon become 'snowed under' with a mountain
of paper.

One particularly
important information source that has been produced by the Family
History Library is the International Genealogical Index (or IGI),
now available on line at the LDS
FamilySearch site. This
contains millions of entries, mainly of baptisms and marriages,
many of them taken from parish registers as part of an organized
program of careful transcription, others provided by individual
but not always careful researchers. Although you will need to
check the original souces of the information contained in the
Index, you will often find that the Index can be a great help to
your research. However, it's coverage is far from complete, so
the fact that the ancestor you are seeking does not appear in the
IGI should not cause you to give up.

***************

GENEALOGY MESSAGE FORUM

Click on the
button on the button to the left to see our Message
Board.

AUSNZ
Passenger Lists- This site
is designed to help family historians locate passenger
lists for migrant ships toAustralia/New Zealand.

ParLoc
- Parish Locator(this
freeware program enables you to locate any one of over
15,000 UK parishes. You will need to download the program
to your computer - full instructions are given.)

On the RootsWeb Site you will find the Rootsweb
Mailing Lists
- a wonderful way to exchange information with other
researchers searching in the same area as youself. There
are Lists available for many different countries, states
and UK Counties, also Surnames, so once you have
established where your ancestors are from, it is a great
idea to join up with the appropriate Emailing List. If
you don't know where your family originated, then check
on RootsWeb to see if there is a list
available for your SURNAME.

From the Rootsweb site it
is also possible to search the Rootsweb Mailing Lists Archives.

The above sites are
only a few of the many thousands of very useful sites available
for your research. But as my website is only meant to assist you
in the very beginning of your research, to list all the sites
available on the web could confuse the beginner.

Once you have
established a few family facts, have a few leads to follow and
are feeling confident enough to start delving more deeply then I
suggest you visit Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the
Internet.

Cyndi's
List is probably one of the
most useful Genealogy sites on the web offering many
thousands of links.

If you can't find what you want on Cyndi's List
then you probably won't find it.

Links
to Family History Sites

If you would like me to add a
link to your Family History site please EMAIL
ME